Handler, Yechiel

Yechiel, son of Zippora and Yosef Handler, was born on September 8, 1927 in the city of Antwerp, Belgium. He was seven years old when his parents immigrated to Israel in 1934. After graduating he worked as a mechanic. In 1942 Yechiel joined the Irgun Zvai Leumi. On Purim 1948 he was wounded in the battle against the British in Tel Aviv near Beit Hadar. During the first days of the outbreak of the War of Independence he stood guard opposite the Hassan Baq Mosque. Yechiel was humble and brave. In his fatherly concern for the wounded, he arranged a kind of small hospital in his parents’ home. Yechiel would say “I will have time to take a vacation when the foreign occupier is expelled and the homeland will be liberated.” On the 20th of Nissan, April 29, 1948, his body was crushed by a shell and Yechiel was brought to rest in the Nachlat Yitzhak military cemetery.